Duby's Doctor (10 page)

“But, he didn’t tell you where it was.” He
tapped the picture with his index finger. “This is how you found
it.” He sat back and smiled at her. “Very sleuthy, Doctor. But
that’s not why you’re here. You’re looking a little desperate,
Doctor. He’s got your juices flowing, don’t he, and you want him
out of the house!”

Mitchell shook her head. “This,” she gestured
around her, “is the boat in that picture. That’s why I’m here. Why
are you here, Agent Stone?”

“I told you. Keeping the place up, in case
Duby returns. Making sure the place is shipshape, no water or gas
fumes in the bilges. Wouldn’t want it to blow up while he’s
gone.”

“What was he to you?” she asked. “How were
you using him? How are you using him now?”

“All you need to know is: this was Duby’s
place. I’m taking care of it until Duby comes back. Period. Butt
out, Doctor. This is no game for amateurs.”

Mitchell stood, crossed to the galley and put
her empty mug in the sink. She picked up an aerosol horn stowed
near the cabin door and lifted it before Stone’s face while raising
an eyebrow in question.

Stone nodded, allowing her to borrow the horn
to summon her ride to shore. Clearly, she did not wish to share the
rowboat with him.

Mitchell had one foot on the exit steps when
she turned to speak to Stone. “Your man, Dubreau? He’s dead. If
anyone comes back to this boat, it won’t be your French-speaking
Terminator – oh, yes, let’s don’t kid ourselves – we both know he
was your undercover muscle with tons of evidence stored in his
memory. But, he’ll never be that again. So, you can stop planning
whatever you’re planning for him to do.”

Stone was unmoved. “Even if he never
remembers, he can still be useful to me.”

Mitchell wanted to curse at him. She blew a
loud horn blast toward his face. Then, she opened the cabin door,
thrust the horn outside, and blew the four blasts necessary to call
the Zodiac.

When she shut the cabin door behind her and
stormed into the cockpit of the sailboat, she stumbled over a
tangled mound of scuba cylinders, regulator hoses, spear guns, and
fishnets. Stone, in his frustration over lack of progress in the
Averell investigation, had not been his usual tidy self when he
searched Duby's cockpit bins for hidden notes or recordings the
undercover agent may have kept there.

“Keeping the place up?” she shouted toward
the cabin door. “Well, you’re doing a lousy job of it!”

Angry and compulsively neat, Mitchell opened
a cockpit seat and began stuffing the scuba gear into the bin
beneath. She continued to clean and organize the deck until the
marina’s Zodiac pulled up alongside to take her away.

She tried not to think of Jean's hands
lifting these same tanks, his mouth covering these same regulators,
his feet slipping into these same open-water swim fins. She tried
not to wonder whether he would ever make use of his boat and his
diving gear again. She tried not to envision him killing something,
or someone, with that spear gun – or with any other weapon, or with
no weapon but his bare hands. She prayed he would never return to
some of his former activities, even if he had been, ostensibly at
least, on the right side of the law.

A few weeks before the discovery of a naked,
unconscious John Doe on Elliott Key.

At a Key Largo fishing pier, divers,
fishermen, boat crews, and tourists milled up and down the planks
amidst dozens of docked and moored boats. Above their heads a
banner stretched, proclaiming the “25th Annual South Florida
Spearfishing Rodeo.”

A few miles out into the Florida Straits, in
the waters above a coral reef, a boat rode at anchor, flying a
smaller banner that read, “Spearfishing Rodeo.”

Red-and-white “divers down” flags bobbed in
the blue-green seas surrounding the boat. A wet-suited diver,
carrying a spear gun, leapt from the boat into the water and
disappeared beneath the surface.

On the same day, in a cemetery two highway
hours north of Key Largo, a somber caravan of automobiles wound its
way between old trees and mildewed headstones. A long, black hearse
led the cortege, followed by two black stretch limousines and,
bringing up the rear, a battered 12-year-old sedan.

The hearse stopped at the foot of a grassy
knoll. Trees, grass, granite monuments, all were dripping from an
earlier heavy rain. Freshly turned earth lent its husky aroma to
the sweetness of a rain-cleansed breeze and the delicate scent from
a nearby hedge of jasmine.

Carinne Averell, looking innocently pretty
and naively young, emerged from the first limousine behind the
hearse. In her exquisitely tailored black mini-dress and Jimmy Choo
shoes, she walked carefully across damp grass to the top of the
knoll, where pallbearers would set a casket in place over an open,
new grave.

Thirty feet below the sea’s surface, a
spearfishing diver swam through a wall of rainbow-colored
parrotfish. Around him the living reef was a fairyland of waving,
pastel pink fan coral and spring green fernlike plants dancing in
the current. Before he could find and spear the massive grouper he
sought, the diver would displace from his path many orange
clownfish, with their black and white stripes, as well as a dozen
species of yellow, blue, green, and even red, finny reef
denizens.

Two impressive bodyguards followed close
behind Carinne as she trekked to the grave. One was Rico, whose
huge, muscled body was as hard as his charcoal heart. The second
was Yves Dubreau, seemingly emotionless behind mirrored sunglasses.
The men were evenly matched physically, though they were opposites
in every other way. Rico was dark inside and out, swarthy, raven
haired, morose, amoral. Duby was lighter in coloring and hid a
sunny disposition beneath a marble-cool facade.

On the reef off Key Largo, a spearfishing
diver swam past two mean-looking, extremely toothy barracuda
circling one another.

At the cemetery, the second limousine had
parked behind the first. No one got out of the second
limousine.

On the opposite side of the grassy knoll, a
homely couple in their late fifties, Frank and Mandy Stone, walked
toward the grave. At the base of the knoll, they had parked their
nondescript old sedan.

A spearfishing diver stopped a moment and
hovered beneath the waves, observing two heavy, green sea turtles
lumbering across the reef.

When the dowdy couple arrived at the
graveside, Frank Stone comforted a weeping Carinne, and the casket
was lowered without ceremony into the grave. Mandy Stone exchanged
an enigmatic look with the bodyguard, Dubreau. Rainwater plopped
from the tree limbs around them. No one spoke. Rico turned and
looked at the second limousine as if for instructions.

A shark cruised the coral reef slowly and
deliberately, fearing nothing, hungry for anything. His hide was
dull gray in color, sandpaper rough in texture, and his black eyes
were soulless. His slightly open, massive mouth created the
illusion of a surly scowl.

Out of nowhere, WHACK, a spear zapped through
his body. The shark thrashed, dying, and painted the water with his
blood.

With the casket out of sight, and no further
ritual to be observed, Mandy Stone trudged alone back down the
knoll toward her old car. Frank Stone escorted Carinne toward the
first limousine on the opposite side of the knoll. Carinne leaned
on Stone’s arm and wept as she walked. Stoically, Rico and Dubreau
walked behind them down the hill.

The foursome was halfway to Carinne’s limo
when the passenger rear window of the second limo whirred down. A
man’s arm beckoned to Rico and Dubreau, both of whom responded
instantly. The two bodyguards stepped forward to flank Carinne and
Stone. Rico took Carinne’s elbow; Dubreau walked close beside
Stone, forcing him to turn with them toward the second limo.

When they reached the second limo, Rico
opened the rear passenger door and nudged Carinne. Before she could
enter the car, Stone stepped in front of her, placing his back
toward the passenger waiting inside the car.

“You drop me a line when you get back to
school, okay, honey?” Stone told her.

“I ... Uncle Francis, it’s not that I don’t
love you and Aunt Mandy ... you know that, don’t you?” Carinne’s
eyes begged for understanding – communicating much more to Frank
Stone than did her words.

Before Carinne could say more, her father,
Kyle Averell, leaned forward from the interior of the car and,
reaching around Stone, took Carinne’s hand. Averell began to pull
Carinne into the car. Where Stone was perpetually common and
rumpled, Averell was elegant and smooth. Stone was nearly bald,
with beard stubble blurring his jawline, while Averell sported a
carefully coiffed silver mane and cosmopolitan goatee.

“Carinne will not be returning to the
university,” Averell said, without bothering to look at Stone. “Her
services will be needed at home, henceforth, as I find myself
without a hostess now that her mother has passed away.”

“You mean, now that you’ve killed her mother,
you greasy snake!” Stone growled and launched himself at
Averell.

Dubreau moved like lightning, pulling Stone
away from Averell while at the same time placing himself between
Stone and Rico, who had drawn a pistol from beneath his black linen
suit jacket.

Sarcasm dripped from Averell’s lips:
“Control! Control, Agent Stone! Suicide is scandalous enough
without your getting arrested at your poor sister’s funeral! Such
unfortunate publicity; very bad for the family honor.” Averell
gestured to Dubreau and commanded, “Duby, escort the nice agent to
his vehicle.”

Stone struggled against Dubreau, determined
to harm Averell.

A cry from Carinne stopped him.

“Duby! Don’t hurt him!” she called. “Uncle
Francis, I know you’re upset, but Mother was sick. Daddy did the
best he could. At least she’s at peace now. Please, just go home.
Please.”

Stone subsided and allowed himself to be
turned around and marched away by Dubreau.

When they had crossed the top of the knoll
and started down the other side, now many yards away from the
limousines, Dubreau walked shoulder-to-shoulder with Stone toward
the vintage sedan. They talked without turning their heads toward
one another, but faced straight ahead all the way.

“I should have shot him when I had the
chance,” muttered Frank Stone.

“You know you can’t hit anything with that
old bent sight, anyway,” said Duby. “Should get that thing
fixed.”

After a few more steps, Stone said, “With her
mother gone, Carinne’s going to need a friend on the inside.”

“Maybe.”

“The original cold fish, aren’t ya. Y’know, a
good Do Bee would put that camera you call a brain in gear and get
me what I need for the grand jury, okay?”

“Workin’ on it.”

They reached Stone’s car. Duby opened the
driver’s door and ushered Stone inside – from a distance it looked
rough. Inside the car, Mandy Stone sat stiffly and looked straight
out the windshield.

Stone turned to look into Duby’s mirrored
sunglasses.

“Even E.T. phoned home once in a while,”
Stone quipped.

“Soon. When I’ve got everything you
need.”

“Watch your back,” said Stone, then started
his car and pulled away.

Duby jogged back toward the waiting
limousine. The empty hearse and extra limo were already gone.

Inside Frank and Mandy Stone’s car, the only
sound was the laboring old engine and the squeaky springs of the
seats. The second sound was exacerbated by the ineffectual shock
absorbers. When they left the pitted cemetery road behind them, the
bump-squeak, bump-squeak was replaced by a steady hum of tires on
smooth pavement.

Mandy Stone was not happy with her husband.
“You said he was on vacation,” she snapped.

“I said he was fishing. He
is
fishing,” Stone said.

“I hope your superiors at Homeland Security
will find that amusing, because I sure don’t. And, on top of
everything else, it’s your fault he’s missing the spearfishing
rodeo.”

“Don’t start.”

“One flounder left in the freezer. One measly
flounder. And, now he may not live long enough to get us more.”

Stone raised his voice, indicating the end of
this discussion. “I can’t pull him out! We’re too close. We’ll
never get this close again.”

Mandy blew her nose loudly into a flowered
handkerchief.

At the impressive Mediterranean-style mansion
on the edge of Coconut Grove, the security guard named Lazaro
accompanied his attack dog on patrol inside the surrounding wall.
From the castle-like tower, an armed sentry looked down onto the
electrified gates, the swimming pool, and the tennis courts.

In the pool, Carinne swam laps, dimly aware
of four men approaching from the house, across the vast lawn. Her
father and his two bodyguards, Rico and Dubreau, were, of course,
familiar to her. She did not yet personally know the man named
Iglesias, but she knew his name and his history as a negotiator and
paramilitary leader for a South American dictator.

Carinne had finished her laps and was
climbing out of the pool when the four men arrived at poolside and
greeted her.

Her father introduced her with a gracious
gesture. “
Señor
Iglesias: my daughter, Carinne.”

Carinne would have wrapped herself in her
beach towel, but Rico stepped between her hand and the chair on
which the towel rested.

Iglesias leered at her. Her father merely
seemed pleased by his guest’s reaction. She wanted to cover herself
with her hands, but such an obvious gesture would certainly bring
her father’s displeasure down upon her.